7 ms·

"Starting to reveal"? The first time Netflix had to remove content from their catalogue because a competing streaming service was getting set up by the license

"Starting to reveal"? The first time Netflix had to remove content from their catalogue because a competing streaming service was getting set up by the license holders, this was both the inevitable and immediately obvious conclusion. There was a brief utopian moment in time where you could just watch what you wanted, when you wanted, the way you wanted, `from a single service, and then reality kicked back in. In the same way the internet was a weird and free place and then reality went "actually, no, we can make more money if we make it a terrible place and charge you a fee to temporarily make it slightly less terrible for you".

nightski 4y ago
It's not that simple. Providers simply can't go back to the old days. They will push consumers to their limit, but I just don't think people are interested in paying $150/mo for scheduled programming with ads any more. In the end it will likely be a compromise. But it's a good time to vote with our wallets.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  I never said it was sustainable, but the chain of events definitely is that simple. Netflix ran into the fact that it offered literally too good a deal for others to not cash in on by making the ecosystem worse so that they can charge people to make it convenient again instead. The fundamental principle behind making money is having something that people want, and then making sure it's inaccessible to them unless they pay you for it. The "making things terrible" comes from content companies going "we have a licensing system in place, we've used it for cable providers for decades, and we even used it for streaming services, but now we're going to cancel that and start our own vertically integrated lock-in service because we'll make way more money that way". While it makes sense, and everyone could have, and very much did, see it coming, it's still the kind of move that historically would have gotten your company broken up. But that's a power modern government seems to no longer want to wield anymore, despite our wishes they did.
  - tomjakubowski 4y ago
    As long as barriers to entry to hosting content and releasing streaming apps remain low, this all seems fine. Where is the potential to abuse the vertical integration? Even if Disney owned Akamai or something, there's decent competition in CDNs.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Piracy is still better and cheaper.
  - paxys 4y ago
    Piracy has always been better and cheaper, but it (thankfully) isn't how the vast majority of people consume content.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Piracy isn't all about price though. It's about convenience too. And it's not actually free. You're not paying the rights holder but pirating these days requires a lot of storage, a VPN perhaps a pay site or Usenet subscription. But also all the time to set up a media server etc. Connecting it to the TV (and all the tablets and phones) in a way the wife and kids can also grok. They don't want to search for Westworld_S04E01_H264_1080p_BLAHBLA.mkv in a long list. Oops no that's the one with the audio glitch, you need to find the PROPER instead. But why are the voices so quiet compared to the sound effects? Must be a Dolby Atmos downmixing problem. This stuff can really ruin the mood after a long work day. When you come home you just want to click on the man with the hat and not have to worry about issues. So you'll need time to review the downloads, categorise content or pay for Plex and a beefy server for the transcoding etc. Fix it when it's down. Keep it all updated. It's not very convenient. Netflix really beat that out with just click & play for a decent price. It was a good deal even being more expensive than piracy because it saved so much hassle. Most people have a life and more money than time to spare now. But the insane fragmentation is now screwing this up. Soon it may be more convenient for the masses to pirate again. Who wants to juggle 10 different subscriptions and player apps on all their devices, each with their own UI peculiarities? Having to deal with all the ads? But what show is on which service now?? Oh Prime Video has the movie I want to watch but it's only the Spanish dubbed version??? The industry has to do a very bad job to make piracy interesting again but they are well on their way. I'd pay €50 a month (which is a lot here in Spain) for a service that carries everything. If I watch all of Westworld this week they can send a big chunk of that HBO's way. If I watch for all mankind the next they can pay Apple. This is what Spotify etc do. Why does it have to be so difficult with video :(
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > I just don't think people are interested in paying $150/mo for scheduled programming with ads any more. They were never interested in that, it's all that was available. "Pay TV" started off with no ads. Eventually, it will be all that is available again. You'll always be surprised at what peoples' limits are when you push them slowly enough.
  - nightski 4y ago
    I don't know, where I grew up in the Midwest in the 90s there were many different cable packages and people always prided themselves on having the all inclusive package even if it was not that financially prudent. But maybe that was not the norm.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  I never paid that kind of money. At least in my circles nobody ever had extravagant cable packages. Just the basic and perhaps one special interest package like sports.
danijelb 4y ago
Problems for Netflix started when they started competing against other content providers with their own original content. If they didn't produce their own content and just provided a distribution platform for others I think we would still have everything on Netflix
- xahrepap 4y ago
  Is that how it happened? My memory is more: Content started disappearing so Netflix started producing original content as a safety net.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  I wish it could be that way, but the content providers started to jack up their prices and withhold certain content a long time before Netflix started their own content factory. Hulu, owned by one of the largest content providers out there, was the turning point. In retrospect it might have been a good time for government to step in and declare that content providers and streaming services must be separate for the good of consumers. Interestingly, the same thing almost happened with Spotify, but most artists eventually came back instead of defecting to other services. I know there are some exclusive artists on each platform, but we've somehow dodged that same bullet with music streaming. Maybe because there are 3-4 relatively popular services, and artists have a little more sway over their distribution? Of course, Spotify is currently commiting this same sin in the podcast space so it's not like their hands are clean.
  - dopeboy 4y ago
    This is a huge point that I bet there will be many business case studies around: why didn't what happened to Netflix happen to Spotify? I thought Tidal was going to be that. Remember their first promo video [0]? Full of A listers pretty much declaring that they're making an artist collective? It had every reason to occur...except it didn't. Why? [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYGdcLbFkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYGdcLbFkw
    - mongol 4y ago
scarface74 4y ago
There was never a time that Netflix streaming had a majority of the popular movies available.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  It didn't need to, we were still happy enough to go the cinema for box office releases back then. Remember that streaming, despite how it might feel, is a stupidly recent thing. Disney went "let's get in on this cash cow" less than 5 years ago.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Netflix started streaming in 2007. It came to mobile in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad. Hulu was also launched in 2007.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Netflix streaming was unexceptional. I dropped it when it became an extra cost option and didn’t pick back up again until House of Cards. Sadly their DVD service has decayed considerably.
koofdoof 4y ago
I agree with the point of your post, however I question whether streaming's utopian moment even actually happened. I was a very early adopter of Netflix streaming and their catalog was quite poor for a long time. Just tons of cheap no name filler content, old public domain type stuff, and a surprising amount of softcore pornography. There were high profile movies and shows sometimes too, but they were the exception and even back then they would get removed regularly. Today's streaming landscape, greedy as it may be, at least offers the ability to stream premium content that Netflix never would have had even in their days of solo dominance. Perhaps the streaming golden age is closer to something that could have been, rather than something that actually was.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Perhaps people are remembering DVD rental Netflix. It was slightly less convenient but had literally everything.
  - smm11 4y ago
    Netflix streaming had literally everything for a time. Now it's literally all Netflix productions. No thanks.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      > Netflix streaming had literally everything for a time. No that's not true - it was never even remotely as extensive as their DVD catalogue, which was almost literally every commercially available DVD. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of films have never been available on any streaming service. Streaming rights entirely different to them buying some DVDs.
      - kmeisthax 4y ago
        You can operate a rental service for physical media with zero licensing required. The cost to Netflix to rent out a niche DVD only five people care about is the cost of buying one copy of the DVD and shipping it out to five people. The cost of a streaming license could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, minimum, no matter how niche the work.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
They were on the way to free over the air free HDTV till the cable companies started trying to kill it. To me it is messed up the commercial/programming/cost ratio if you look at providers like youtube and Hulu. We are all getting less for more money. And all this streaming just fragmented society even more. I remember when we all used to (locally) talk about the recent show that we all watched at the same time, or the same news program. Now you have to catch up to all your friends because they streamed a whole series in one night. I mean we should just call them extended length movies anyway.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Streaming shows can drop weekly. HBO and Apple do it. Arguably it would help keep people from hopping around services.
powerhour 4y ago
I'm ok with content being spread across competing services. If Netflix was the only game in town (like it pretty much was for a while) we'd see less content. I don't find the pricing of any existing service objectionable. I can pay about $15 and watch whatever I want in their catalog for a month, then cancel if I decide to try a different service. It'd be different if I were stuck in some long contract but I've yet to see that in the streaming market.
- anthonybennis 4y ago
  Agreed. Just subscribe for a time to watch what you consider their AAA content and then move on to next service. Suits the binge series watching habit.
  - incahoots 4y ago
    You can sign up with trials that require a CC and utilize something like privacy.com to create hard limit virtual cards so you aren't chasing services around to determine when it'll pull from the card and the unavoidable PITA it is to cancel said services.
- guelo 4y ago
  They're planning on clamping down on users like you. One of their next moves will be getting rid of the binge model and returning to trickling out episodes over months.
  - powerhour 4y ago
    They're going to try to stop me from resubscribing? I'm small time but I'll still say it: their loss.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      The likely first step will be heavy discounts for paying annually rather than monthly.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
This is why everyone should pirate. People on here love to complain about Facebook hating their users. I don't see any companies that despise their users quite like Comcast and At&t and Disney.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  > I don't see any companies that despise their users quite like <snip> Disney. I don’t get this take. Disney spends billions of dollars to make movies and TV shows that I and my family want to watch. I pay them $8/mo, and I get to watch all of them, whenever I want. How is that a bad thing?
  - shultays 4y ago
    After an update, my tv got unavoidable disney ads on its home page. I had to downgrade it and disable updates. And I dont even have Disney app is installed. I consider them to be pretty evil
    - incahoots 4y ago
      Sounds like you made the mistake of enabling your TV to gain access to a network. There's dozens of articles that spell out why that's a horrible idea, your experience is one of those reasons. Never allow a television access to your network, you get a dedicated device to do the streaming/airplay/chromecast features and that's it.
      - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
        The fact that connecting your TV to the network is a mistake is just more proof of current dystopian trends.
        incahoots 4y ago
        You're not wrong but that's the world we find ourselves in. No idea why my comment got down voted considering anyone in the tech industry knows that TVs don't belong on networks.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Strange thing though that the music industry managed to do fine without resorting to this. Dr Dre is not exclusive to Apple music. So why does it have to be this way with video?
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  The music industry sells music by the minute, not by the hour. If you could only buy entire albums, the music industry would have guaranteed moved in this direction too.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    They totally managed it in the video rental days though. There were no exclusives then, at least not where I lived.

nightski 4y ago

It's not that simple. Providers simply can't go back to the old days. They will push consumers to their limit, but I just don't think people are interested in paying $150/mo for scheduled programming with ads any more. In the end it will likely be a compromise. But it's a good time to vote with our wallets.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
I never said it was sustainable, but the chain of events definitely is that simple. Netflix ran into the fact that it offered literally too good a deal for others to not cash in on by making the ecosystem worse so that they can charge people to make it convenient again instead. The fundamental principle behind making money is having something that people want, and then making sure it's inaccessible to them unless they pay you for it. The "making things terrible" comes from content companies going "we have a licensing system in place, we've used it for cable providers for decades, and we even used it for streaming services, but now we're going to cancel that and start our own vertically integrated lock-in service because we'll make way more money that way". While it makes sense, and everyone could have, and very much did, see it coming, it's still the kind of move that historically would have gotten your company broken up. But that's a power modern government seems to no longer want to wield anymore, despite our wishes they did.
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  As long as barriers to entry to hosting content and releasing streaming apps remain low, this all seems fine. Where is the potential to abuse the vertical integration? Even if Disney owned Akamai or something, there's decent competition in CDNs.
rglullis 4y ago
Piracy is still better and cheaper.
- paxys 4y ago
  Piracy has always been better and cheaper, but it (thankfully) isn't how the vast majority of people consume content.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Piracy isn't all about price though. It's about convenience too. And it's not actually free. You're not paying the rights holder but pirating these days requires a lot of storage, a VPN perhaps a pay site or Usenet subscription. But also all the time to set up a media server etc. Connecting it to the TV (and all the tablets and phones) in a way the wife and kids can also grok. They don't want to search for Westworld_S04E01_H264_1080p_BLAHBLA.mkv in a long list. Oops no that's the one with the audio glitch, you need to find the PROPER instead. But why are the voices so quiet compared to the sound effects? Must be a Dolby Atmos downmixing problem. This stuff can really ruin the mood after a long work day. When you come home you just want to click on the man with the hat and not have to worry about issues. So you'll need time to review the downloads, categorise content or pay for Plex and a beefy server for the transcoding etc. Fix it when it's down. Keep it all updated. It's not very convenient. Netflix really beat that out with just click & play for a decent price. It was a good deal even being more expensive than piracy because it saved so much hassle. Most people have a life and more money than time to spare now. But the insane fragmentation is now screwing this up. Soon it may be more convenient for the masses to pirate again. Who wants to juggle 10 different subscriptions and player apps on all their devices, each with their own UI peculiarities? Having to deal with all the ads? But what show is on which service now?? Oh Prime Video has the movie I want to watch but it's only the Spanish dubbed version??? The industry has to do a very bad job to make piracy interesting again but they are well on their way. I'd pay €50 a month (which is a lot here in Spain) for a service that carries everything. If I watch all of Westworld this week they can send a big chunk of that HBO's way. If I watch for all mankind the next they can pay Apple. This is what Spotify etc do. Why does it have to be so difficult with video :(
pessimizer 4y ago
> I just don't think people are interested in paying $150/mo for scheduled programming with ads any more. They were never interested in that, it's all that was available. "Pay TV" started off with no ads. Eventually, it will be all that is available again. You'll always be surprised at what peoples' limits are when you push them slowly enough.
- nightski 4y ago
  I don't know, where I grew up in the Midwest in the 90s there were many different cable packages and people always prided themselves on having the all inclusive package even if it was not that financially prudent. But maybe that was not the norm.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
I never paid that kind of money. At least in my circles nobody ever had extravagant cable packages. Just the basic and perhaps one special interest package like sports.

danijelb 4y ago

Problems for Netflix started when they started competing against other content providers with their own original content. If they didn't produce their own content and just provided a distribution platform for others I think we would still have everything on Netflix

xahrepap 4y ago
Is that how it happened? My memory is more: Content started disappearing so Netflix started producing original content as a safety net.
dont__panic 4y ago
I wish it could be that way, but the content providers started to jack up their prices and withhold certain content a long time before Netflix started their own content factory. Hulu, owned by one of the largest content providers out there, was the turning point. In retrospect it might have been a good time for government to step in and declare that content providers and streaming services must be separate for the good of consumers. Interestingly, the same thing almost happened with Spotify, but most artists eventually came back instead of defecting to other services. I know there are some exclusive artists on each platform, but we've somehow dodged that same bullet with music streaming. Maybe because there are 3-4 relatively popular services, and artists have a little more sway over their distribution? Of course, Spotify is currently commiting this same sin in the podcast space so it's not like their hands are clean.
- dopeboy 4y ago
  This is a huge point that I bet there will be many business case studies around: why didn't what happened to Netflix happen to Spotify? I thought Tidal was going to be that. Remember their first promo video [0]? Full of A listers pretty much declaring that they're making an artist collective? It had every reason to occur...except it didn't. Why? [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYGdcLbFkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYGdcLbFkw
  - mongol 4y ago

scarface74 4y ago

There was never a time that Netflix streaming had a majority of the popular movies available.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
It didn't need to, we were still happy enough to go the cinema for box office releases back then. Remember that streaming, despite how it might feel, is a stupidly recent thing. Disney went "let's get in on this cash cow" less than 5 years ago.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Netflix started streaming in 2007. It came to mobile in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad. Hulu was also launched in 2007.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Netflix streaming was unexceptional. I dropped it when it became an extra cost option and didn’t pick back up again until House of Cards. Sadly their DVD service has decayed considerably.

koofdoof 4y ago

I agree with the point of your post, however I question whether streaming's utopian moment even actually happened. I was a very early adopter of Netflix streaming and their catalog was quite poor for a long time. Just tons of cheap no name filler content, old public domain type stuff, and a surprising amount of softcore pornography. There were high profile movies and shows sometimes too, but they were the exception and even back then they would get removed regularly. Today's streaming landscape, greedy as it may be, at least offers the ability to stream premium content that Netflix never would have had even in their days of solo dominance. Perhaps the streaming golden age is closer to something that could have been, rather than something that actually was.

kmeisthax 4y ago
Perhaps people are remembering DVD rental Netflix. It was slightly less convenient but had literally everything.
- smm11 4y ago
  Netflix streaming had literally everything for a time. Now it's literally all Netflix productions. No thanks.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > Netflix streaming had literally everything for a time. No that's not true - it was never even remotely as extensive as their DVD catalogue, which was almost literally every commercially available DVD. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of films have never been available on any streaming service. Streaming rights entirely different to them buying some DVDs.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      You can operate a rental service for physical media with zero licensing required. The cost to Netflix to rent out a niche DVD only five people care about is the cost of buying one copy of the DVD and shipping it out to five people. The cost of a streaming license could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, minimum, no matter how niche the work.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

They were on the way to free over the air free HDTV till the cable companies started trying to kill it. To me it is messed up the commercial/programming/cost ratio if you look at providers like youtube and Hulu. We are all getting less for more money. And all this streaming just fragmented society even more. I remember when we all used to (locally) talk about the recent show that we all watched at the same time, or the same news program. Now you have to catch up to all your friends because they streamed a whole series in one night. I mean we should just call them extended length movies anyway.

ghaff 4y ago
Streaming shows can drop weekly. HBO and Apple do it. Arguably it would help keep people from hopping around services.

powerhour 4y ago

I'm ok with content being spread across competing services. If Netflix was the only game in town (like it pretty much was for a while) we'd see less content. I don't find the pricing of any existing service objectionable. I can pay about $15 and watch whatever I want in their catalog for a month, then cancel if I decide to try a different service. It'd be different if I were stuck in some long contract but I've yet to see that in the streaming market.

anthonybennis 4y ago
Agreed. Just subscribe for a time to watch what you consider their AAA content and then move on to next service. Suits the binge series watching habit.
- incahoots 4y ago
  You can sign up with trials that require a CC and utilize something like privacy.com to create hard limit virtual cards so you aren't chasing services around to determine when it'll pull from the card and the unavoidable PITA it is to cancel said services.
guelo 4y ago
They're planning on clamping down on users like you. One of their next moves will be getting rid of the binge model and returning to trickling out episodes over months.
- powerhour 4y ago
  They're going to try to stop me from resubscribing? I'm small time but I'll still say it: their loss.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The likely first step will be heavy discounts for paying annually rather than monthly.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

This is why everyone should pirate. People on here love to complain about Facebook hating their users. I don't see any companies that despise their users quite like Comcast and At&t and Disney.

happyopossum 4y ago
> I don't see any companies that despise their users quite like <snip> Disney. I don’t get this take. Disney spends billions of dollars to make movies and TV shows that I and my family want to watch. I pay them $8/mo, and I get to watch all of them, whenever I want. How is that a bad thing?
- shultays 4y ago
  After an update, my tv got unavoidable disney ads on its home page. I had to downgrade it and disable updates. And I dont even have Disney app is installed. I consider them to be pretty evil
  - incahoots 4y ago
    Sounds like you made the mistake of enabling your TV to gain access to a network. There's dozens of articles that spell out why that's a horrible idea, your experience is one of those reasons. Never allow a television access to your network, you get a dedicated device to do the streaming/airplay/chromecast features and that's it.
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
      The fact that connecting your TV to the network is a mistake is just more proof of current dystopian trends.
      - incahoots 4y ago
        You're not wrong but that's the world we find ourselves in. No idea why my comment got down voted considering anyone in the tech industry knows that TVs don't belong on networks.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Strange thing though that the music industry managed to do fine without resorting to this. Dr Dre is not exclusive to Apple music. So why does it have to be this way with video?

TheRealPomax 4y ago
The music industry sells music by the minute, not by the hour. If you could only buy entire albums, the music industry would have guaranteed moved in this direction too.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  They totally managed it in the video rental days though. There were no exclusives then, at least not where I lived.